The Great Grant Hustle
This is the name I’ve given the first quarter of the year. It encapsulates my belief that the first quarter is a time to submit as many strong grant applications as possible.
The first quarter many times means: a) fresh budgets at foundations; b) fresh energy and ideas at your organization, and c) events aren’t taking up all our time yet – making it a great time to get our grant writing on!
But, in order to have a most productive hustle, you’ve got to have everything ready.
Here is the work you should be doing in December (and in the months leading up to December) for a great grant hustle:
- Complete your grant writing plan for the year. Get all your prospecting done and your grants calendar in order. You want to be able to simply reference it once the hustle begins.
- Finalize your proposal templates in December as well – this means your case for support for general operating and any program specific requests you are pursuing. As part of this effort, consider the following:
a) Make sure your template includes videos and photographs that visualize for grant makers the impact you have on the people (or populations) you serve.
b) Have ready answers to questions such as these: What are your projected outcomes for this work? What successes have you had to date? What will be your evaluation tools and metrics for the project? What other foundations are funding this work?
c) Have all organizational financials in place – last year’s audit, organizational budget, and project budgets
With your prep work complete, you are ready to churn them out! You still want everything to be high quality, but you are prepared to conduct fast proposal production and submission.
We at TakeTwo know the hustle on right now – in the first quarter, we often submitted 20+ proposals on behalf of our clients. Get your hustle on too, before the days and months tick away…as they tend to do. Without the proper planning and execution, before we know it, we will be speaking in would haves/could haves/should haves all over again.
